STAMFORD -- With the premise of gathering information for upcoming Congressional votes on funding the American military presence in Afghanistan, U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4, Tuesday held the first of four town-hall style meetings on the issue in the auditorium of UConn Stamford.

Himes recently returned from a whirlwind fact-finding trip to Afghanistan. He prefaced his introduction by asking the 120 people in attendance at the evening meeting to consider who would pay for extending the American presence in the country, and if you want to pull out all of the troops, how would this unstable region be managed?

"I don't know exactly where I stand on the issue (of Afghanistan)," Himes said. "It's possible to have a principled and thoughtful discussion on the president being right on sending more troops and money over there, and it's possible to have a principled and thoughtful discussion on the president being wrong on this issue. All too often in Congress we are challenged on our motives, not on the issues."

Himes briefly recounted the last 30 years in Afghanistan, beginning with the Soviet Union's invasion in 1979 to prop up a failing Communist government.

The Soviet withdrawal 10 years later produced a period of chaos in what became a warlord nation, with rampant looting, allowing the Taliban to step in, Himes said.

After Sept. 11, 2001, it was quickly discovered that Taliban camps in Afghanistan had sheltered and trained many of the terrorists that carried out those deadly attacks.

Military intervention -- mostly by U.S. Special Forces -- removed the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban from its influence over that nation. Most of the surviving Al-Qaeda forced fled over the border to the ungoverned regions of Pakistan.

"We never adequately resourced the mission of rebuilding Afghanistan," Himes said. "We've seen a decline in the stability of the country in the last year. American casualties have gone up considerably, to more than 950 soldiers dead, and November was the deadliest month since we've been there."

Ronnie Kaplan, a resident of Stamford for many years, wanted to know how a country can be stabilized when there are so many problems in its leadership.

"My problem is we can't do it alone in Afghanistan," Kaplan said. "(President Hamid) Karzai and his people are corrupt. I don't think there's a way to build a nation without a government there to work with."

Himes agreed, and had no immediate solution to this thorny aspect.

"There's no question there's a lot of drug money wrapped up in (the Afghan) government," Himes said. "Karzai's brother is involved, and there was a lot of corruption, rampant corruption, in the elections."

Richard Radez from Westport, a 1967 West Point graduate and veteran of two years in Vietnam, is concerned that we are heading down a similar path in Afghanistan.

"It's deja vu all over again," Radez said. "We supported a corrupt government in Saigon (Vietnam) and we're supporting a corrupt government in (Afghanistan's capital city of) Kabul. I support a surtax right now to pay for this war. I don't want to borrow money from the Chinese. We can pay to fight our own war."

Himes said the makeup of Afghanistan will make it difficult to get any kind of consensus on rebuilding the nation.

"With the tribal nature of Afghanistan, there's very little loyalty to President Karzai," Himes said. "The Taliban is widely hated, with about 9 percent popularity in Afghanistan. These people (Taliban), by and large, are feared and hated by the Afghan people."

Stamford native Archie Elam, a veteran of the first Gulf War, appeared to speak for the majority of people in the room.

"I'm in favor of devoting support to this war, and I acknowledge reality," Elam said. "We must make investments to make it right. This is a war of wills, and our enemies want to run the world their way. We should take risks to insure the stability of Afghanistan."